Taylor's Main Principles of Scientific Management in Working Place Essay

Taylor's Main Principles of Scientific Management in Working Place - Essay Example Process are now clearly defined as well as how to do it that does not leave any room for intuitive job functioning. This is also to achieve uniformity and consistency in production and to make quality and output predictable. Scientific Management is an engineering approach to achieve efficiency in the workplace. Where the workplace or organization can be likened to a machine which is composed of several parts that should work together to achieve optimum efficiency. Principles of Scientific Management The first systematic attempt to address this conflict and labor recalcitrance in organization was directed by Frederick Winslow Taylor with his Scientific Management. For Taylor, the key to establishing an efficient and productive workplace required the possession and control of knowledge about the methods of production (Jaffe, 2008). Taylor's (1911) preface to the Principles of Scientific Management makes this quite clear when he stresses for national efficiency... first, it is teleolog ical in its orientation to means: what is important is securing the desired consequences. Second, in Taylor's philosophy, actions can be judged only by their consequences: a dogged empiricism is allied to an unquestioned grasp of the ends to be served. Third, ends are defined in terms of efficiency (primarily for factory owners) but are represented as the common good (Taylor, 1911). In pursuit of optimum efficiency, this Scientific Management engendered the idea of defining and breaking down of functions in narrowly defined tasks. Organization is viewed like a well-oiled machine where its parts, including labor would conform to the predetermined methods already in place. It proposed an engineering solution to a human issue with the objective of minimizing friction brought by human factor that the results of production may be predictable. According to Frederick Taylor, "Scientific Management is a distinctively scientific, since it aims to correlate in factory administration, and to p ush development further in accordance with the principles discovered (Taylor, 1911). According to Taylor (1911), the key features of scientific management are as follows: time study, functional or divided foremanship, the standardization of all tools and implements used in trades, the standardization of the acts and movements of workmen in each class of work, a unique planning function, management by the exception method, the use of slide-rules and other similar timesaving methods, instruction cards for workers, careful task Performance Improvement allocation, bonuses for successful performance, the use of a â€Å"differential rate,† a routing system, and mnemonic systems for classifying products and modern cost systems. The underlying principles of the philosophy are as follows: (a) the development of a true science for each element of a job, (b) the scientific selection and training of the worker, (c) cooperation with the worker to ensure that the job is being done in accor dance with principles of scientific education, and (e) an almost equal division of work and responsibility between workers and management (Wagner, 2007). Section 2. Case: Harvey Fast Food Restaurant I. Shift the decision making responsibility from the workers to managers   Decision making responsibility can be shifted to the managers from the workers when functions are broken down into specific tasks where it can be quantified for the managers to determine objective productivity output. In this way, the determination